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Potentially a little (a lot) morbid, but on my journalism course our exercise for learning to write obits was to pick a fellow course member and imagine their life (could be as straight-laced or as boring as you liked) then write an obit for them. They were all saved up and read out by the tutor on the last day - including a brilliant one for someone who had drunkenly confessed he let his gf piss on him, whose obit ended; *He was killed in a water-skiing accident, but watersports were always his passion*, which got a huge laugh but confused the teachers no end.

Amidst the economic turmoil of the first two decades of the 21st century, as the euro (the former single currency of 17 member states of the now defunct European Union) teetered on the brink of collapse and interest rates in the developed world bumped along at close to zero per cent, Barry "creaky" Knees burst from relative obscurity into the limelight as a champion for a new world order.

Knees, who has died aged 81, was born into a working-class family in the Midlands. His mother, a school dinner lady, struggled to make ends meet and the strain of this home life meant that the young Barry was a pugilistic misfit throughout his school days.

After graduating from the university of life, Knees married and began a somewhat nomadic career in the IT sector, all the while taking refuge from the humdrum banality of life in Cocteau Twins records and internet message boards.

As the economic apocalypse of 2014 approached, Knees' online rantings increased in intensity (one acquaintance, identified only as "TheoGB", recalls Knees' stream-of-consciousness outpourings as "verbal diarrhoea, no question, but compelling all the same") and his views came to the notice of Hu Jintao, then President of China. Mr Hu was said to be impressed by the worldview espoused by Knees and allegedly empathised with the poor English spelling, sentence construction and grammar in Knees' online posts.

In November 2013, Knees was invited to Beijing for an audience with Mr Hu, at which meeting he was offered a senior role in the Politburo of the Communist Party. Knees had no hesitation in accepting and moved his family to China at once.

As the economies of the western world collapsed during the course of the following year, Knees' first manifesto - "Have you seen it yet?" - was published in English and Mandarin.